


Alias

by Kayt



Category: The Murderbot Diaries - Martha Wells
Genre: Canon Compliant, Canon-typical levels of corporates treating SecUnits badly, Gen, POV First Person, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-27
Updated: 2020-08-27
Packaged: 2021-03-06 20:34:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,368
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26144938
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kayt/pseuds/Kayt
Summary: Murderbot doesn't want you calling it by its real name; Murderbot doesn't want you calling it byanyname. But humans name things, and Murderbot has been around a lot of humans.Memory files from Murderbot's past.
Comments: 22
Kudos: 159





	Alias

**105,189** **hours ago**

There are five of us currently watching the miners. Mining contracts are boring, because our primary purpose is to look imposing and stop the human and augmented human workers from assaulting the managers or each other. So far, I’ve done plenty of the former and little of the latter: the workers don’t like us, speeding up slightly when they walk by us; avoiding eye contact even though each construct wears full armor with an impenetrably opaque helmet. 

There’s an alert on my feed; Briggs, an augmented human at management level, has added a tag to my feed profile: _Green_. Checking the other SecUnit profiles, each has been tagged with a color: _Blue, Yellow, Pink, Tan_. The client doesn’t send anything further, so I follow protocol and continue watching the miners.

Several hours later, all five Units are stationed around the space that acts as a gathering area for humans while they all eat a meal. This is unusual; protocol dictates that two Units be patrolling and conducting sweeps, but Briggs has overridden that with new orders. Perhaps he expects an attack from the miners, but my risk assessment module predicts only a 17% chance of human-on-human violence that could require MedSystem treatment within the next week. For mining this is considered a small, short-term contract with only two of the total twelve weeks completed so far. Risk of human violence will rise as the weeks progress, but statistically won’t be assessed at over 50% until the fourth or fifth week in.

There’s a larger chance that Briggs is going to try to get ahead of that by having SecUnits injure a human tonight. I continue monitoring the audio and feed conversations of the two tables closest to me, but they show only the normal amount of nervousness at my presence.

The humans are finishing their meals but remain seated, glancing back and forth at the SecUnits with expressions I can’t decipher. Briggs approaches the front of the room and announces the start of a twice-weekly reward: if the miners keep productivity levels within an acceptable range, including limiting productivity-diminishing actions (half the room looks at a human at a far table who was intercepted by SecUnit04/ _Feedname_ _: Yellow_ before she could accidentally kill herself with an unshielded metal shearer yesterday), they will be allowed to release physical stress on SecUnits within a controlled environment, with the specific SecUnit chosen via random generation.

If the humans don’t attack each other, they’ll be allowed to attack us. 

A client is within contract to do this, but I’m already backing a recording up to HubSystem in places where it won’t get overwritten accidentally anyway. SecUnits don’t fidget like humans do, but in the feed I can sense the other Units doing the same thing. SecUnit01/ _Feedname_ _: Tan_ has been running data analysis on the managers-only secured feed, and sorts it into priority channels for company dataminers to access later. 

Briggs throws a random generation program into the common feed and it highlights a color. “Green!” he shouts over the increased human noise level, looking from Unit to Unit. “SecUnit Green, stand up here.”

I take my place beside him.

An hour later I’m on patrol as normal, performance reliability at 98%. Humans can’t do much, unarmed, to an armored SecUnit. They also didn’t try very hard, skittish of what I could do to them if Briggs changed his orders. But he didn’t, so I couldn’t. As the weeks go on and Briggs keeps his word to them, the miners will get bolder. 

As a special treat for the miners on the last night of the contract, they shoot us. Actually, Briggs and Assistant Manager Fowler shoot us, since they’re not stupid enough to let the miners handle weapons. They also shot us at least once a week after reaching the contract’s halfway point and the miners’ agitation grew, but the treat this time was creating enough damage to cause a shutdown—just to one Unit, of course, so there would be enough SecUnits in working condition to continue enforcement. 

I arrive back at the company processing room in my cubicle. One tech rolls her eyes while reading a status report. “Fuckin’ miners always break these things. Have fun with damage charges, fuc—Oh! This is cute!” She sends a picture to another tech nearby. “They named it.” 

~

**???timestamp lost due to memory purge**

“SecurityBot!” 

“It’s not a bot, it’s a construct, you backwards amoeba. Where’d you grow up, outside the Rim?”

“Whatever, I just want to see how many things I can call it and still get a response.”

~

**61,362 hours ago**

Donald has been eyeing me since I stepped out of the cargo area and unloaded the hopper. When humans look at me, it’s with usually obvious discomfort. I can’t decipher this expression. Humans that aren’t nervous around a SecUnit are an anomaly, but not enough of one that my threat assessment module thinks anything will happen.

I’m in the equipment room four days into the contract when something happens.

“I’m your assigned SecUnit,” I say, because that is what protocol dictates, and because SecUnits don’t have names no matter how many times you ask, and because there is no approved response to a human touching me like this.

“Sounds like SexUnit,” he says, rubbing his thumb over my wrist (well, joint between forearm armor and gloves). Stupid human could lose a limb if I deployed the energy weapon in that arm right now. Stupid governor module would fry the brain of the stupid SecUnit who did that. It still takes me three point eight seconds to resist the urge.

Clients could order a lot of things, but not this. “Unit equipment may only be handled by contract supervisors,” says my buffer. I don’t move away—he seems like the type to order a halt—but I send an alert to Supervisor Sareen.

He inhales to reply, but Sareen’s voice fills the comm, annoyed. “Donald, get your ass back to the main module, you’re on duty. We’re paying out the nose as it is; if you do anything to cost us money, it’s coming straight from your credit.” I’m equipment, but at least I’m expensive equipment.

Donald sneers. “Fuckers wouldn’t even pay for a _real_ sexbot,” he mutters as he saunters away, “Gotta spend time on this fucking asteroid with fucking hard-asses…"

On an installation this small, it’s impossible to avoid any human or augmented human completely and do my job well enough to not get punished by the governor module. After I send the third alert, when Donald learns he can’t pry pieces of armor off ( _ha_ _ha_ _, asshole_ ), Sareen gets fed up. “SexU—SecUnit, if he touches you again, break his leg.” I caught the slip. Donald’s now making stupid noises but Sareen talks over him. “He needs his hands for work, but MedSystem can fix a leg _later_ , so he can keep working _without taking me away from my reports_.”

The touching stops. The looks don’t.

I do my job _exceptionally_ well this time around, paying particularly close attention to his data and making sure none of it’s accidentally overwritten. Potential to damage company equipment means higher bonds in the future.

~

**???timestamp lost due to memory purge**

“You look like Yves.”

Before I can contemplate replying Dirner rushes up to catch her wayward offspring, who is currently addressing my thigh. “Radka, baby, leave it alone, it might hurt you. While the meetings are going on, I don’t want you anywhere near it.”

The child looks up at my helmet. I haven’t moved. “It’s Yves.”

“Baby, your media isn’t real and Yves is a science—” she carries the child down the hall in the direction of the distant visitor quarters, while I remain outside the meeting room with a secure comm. Radka manages to find her way back for ten second three days later, long enough to shout hello before fleeing her approaching parent.

~

**26,280 hours ago**

“I feel like it’s going to assassinate me,” Helmi says, shooting me a nervous sidelong glance. My faceplate is opaque, which is good because I’m fighting the urge to roll my eyes and losing. The entire point of the company requiring a SecUnit on this trip was so the humans _didn’t_ get murdered. The amount the company would have to pay for death caused by malfunctioning equipment (me) is, well, it doesn’t matter because it’s _an amount_ and the company hates anything that requires them to send money places where it won’t come back to them.

Trust me, if I kill someone, it’ll be a raider in one of the abandoned stations this contract team is inspecting. Probably not this one, though, since I’ve just returned from sweeping the small platform and confirming it’s safe for the team to come through the airlock. You’d think they would have better things to worry about right now. (They do, but they’d rather worry about stupid things that don’t matter.)

Nazary chuckles. I don’t like him. I mean, I don’t like humans in general, but I specifically don’t like him, right now, and how he’s pretending he hasn’t had the same thoughts. I see the way you (don’t) look at me, asshole.

But Nazary’s trying to show off for Helmi, I guess. “Nah, Helms, look, they’ve got this thing under control. You’ve gotta stop watching those series, media hypes them up for the drama. They don’t even _talk_ in real life, just send stuff over the feed.” 

I have hundreds of thousands of hours of client experience, more than I can remember (literally) and have _also_ managed to go over 9,000 hours without my deactivated governor module being discovered, so I have perfect self-control. It’s amazingly easy for me not to give in to the urge to turn my head and stare at him in what would definitely be interpreted in a threatening manner. 

“Can you imagine it as an actual assassin, though?” Nazary’s confident about whatever that means, but I didn’t realize “assassin” differed from “murderer,” which I definitely am. If I’m lucky and he’s not, Nazary will get to see that first-hand. If I’m especially lucky, it will be soon enough to make him shut up. “Piloting a micro-shuttle with a camouflage field, sneaking into enemy corporation boardrooms, stealth drones ready to spray nerve gas—ASSASYNTH! Then the theme song starts like _neeeerbadabum_ _,”_ he waves his arms around and Helmi cracks a smile.

AssaSynth. I clench my jaw so tightly a warning appears. It’s too close to my name, my real name, which is private. I don’t like these humans calling me something that’s even remotely close, but there’s no way to make them stop without revealing my broken governor module. 

(Okay, I don’t like humans calling me _anything_ , but that’s beside the point.) 

I’m dubbed AssaSynth by Nazary for the next three days, until he gets tired of the increasingly-forced (even I can tell) perfunctory responses from Helmi.

By complete coincidence, that’s about the time that the team discovers Nazary’s personal notes saved to the shared system, rather than his personal device. Wow, you’d think that with the kind of things he wrote, he’d take more care about protecting those files, but obviously it was his mistake. Not like anything could alter them without being noticed, especially me. I’m _under control_. 

~

**???timestamp lost due to memory purge  
**

“Hey, Aldo!” Ciolfi cheerfully swings an energy weapon around, tossing it from palm to palm, looking at me. 

Apprederis watches her, bemused. “Naming the tools now?” 

“Nah, it’s just so tall it reminded me of my brother, so I think I’ll call it by his name.” 

A blast of energy hits me in the left shin, more annoying than painful. I grit my teeth and ignore the urge to return fire with my own weapon. 

Ciolfi twirls her weapon again. “Always hated that shithead.” 

~ 

**14,025 hours ago**

I’m putting away survey equipment (not me) after doing a visual sweep of the new habitat and grounds when I pass a cluster of survey members and one does a double take. 

“Who are you?” Intern Nsiah asks, as if expecting another team member. Of course: biologist, xenobotanist, geologist, and whatever the fuck wears armor like this. 

“I’m your assigned SecUnit.” 

“Oh,” they say, understanding dawning in their eyes, looking at me more closely. Probably comparing me to the SecUnits in the media. “Do you have a name?” 

_Not for you_. “I’m your assigned SecUnit,” I say again. 

“Okay,” they say. “I’m going to call you Yasu.” Behind them, Dean Evans is snorting and expressing disdain because _why would you_ name _the thing—_

I don’t like this. I still need to inventory the sampling equipment and haven’t been ordered to stay, so I leave. Through the feed I listen to make sure they’re not plotting anything. Evans is still mocking them; Nsiah is explaining that they feel _everything_ should have a name. “See, my interface is Mira, the best plush chair in the grad department is Essian, the cleaning bot back in the office is Stanislaw—” 

When the contract ends thirty-seven planetary cycles later, all nine members of the team are calling me Yasu, but they’re also all referring to the little hopper as Hoda, the geology sampler as Ibuki, and at least half used Hubbles for Hubsystem. 

Ugh. As soon as I’m cleared by the company techs to go on standby, I’m initiating a memory purge. 

Hubbles.

~

**17 minutes ago  
**

Another one of Mensah’s small humans is looking at me with curiosity. “Do you have a name?” 

“Yes.” 

They squint at me, waiting. When I don’t elaborate, they continue. “Will you tell it to me?” 

“No.” 

“Oh.” A pause. I know Mensah has referred to me as SecUnit in front of her family members, but I’ve discovered the kids apparently don’t trust their parent enough and want to confirm everything. Smart. I mean, in general, anyway, not because Mensah isn’t trustworthy. “Samira says you gave her the full version of _Nebula_ _Cycle Two_.” 

“Yes.” 

“Trade you Ji-min’s _Dus_ _k_ _Excavation_ for it.” 

You don’t need to know a name for that anyway. I make a private feed connection. 

**Author's Note:**

> Fun fact: AssaSynth is the French translation name of Murderbot, which is just _fantastic_.
> 
> I figure it might've taken a while for Murderbot to develop its snarky inner voice, but gosh is the snark fun to write.
> 
> General hour conversions:  
> -14,025 is 1.6 years  
> -26,280 is 3 years  
> -61,362 is 7 years  
> -105,189 is 12 years


End file.
